Working from home and walking to stores, I don't drive my car much.

After three and a half years, less than ten thousand miles.

As little as I drive, I still ran over a nail and had to get a new tire.

I figured I might as well buy 4 new tires, but the store owner insisted I just needed the one.

Okay, fine. Thanks.

A week later, I hit a pothole too quickly and tore up another tire.

And I needed a tow to the tire shop.

He's still only selling me one tire.

At a time, I worry.

It's National Lemon Day.

I go through a bag of lemons a week.

They help prevent kidney stones.

Well, the standard ones.

The uric acid ones, you also need to do potassium, keep your pH in check, and avoid foods with purine, and so on.

Every morning, I put 2 lemons on the cutting board.

Ream a half lemon out with every glass of iced tea.

Oh, I drink a lot of iced tea and water.

Because I don't want to wait 10 hours in the emergency room for a dose of Demerol and a cat-scan.

You know... the stones.

The Flugelheimer Circus Train took the curve too fast and went off the rails outside of Morgantown.

Right out by the ravine, half the cars rolling down the hill into the rocks.

The others like scattered crushed boxes, spilling out broken animals and people.

The few survivors, limping and crawling and carrying each other to the lights of Morgantown.

Ambulances and nurses rushing out, the Boy Scout Troop giving first aid, no comfort to the mangled.

And where was Flugelheimer?

Not in his private car.

He was in Rio with the formerly-bearded lady, living it up with the insurance payout.

I work with a charity that builds schools in poor neighborhoods.

Neighborhoods with run-down schools, not enough skilled teachers, old textbooks, and few after-school activities to keep kids out of gangs.

We get a lot of grant money and celebrity support.

And we use it to build the schools.

The best schools. Beautifully and perfectly designed schools.

Problem is, when we're done building the schools, there's no money left.

Maybe enough for a ribbon for a politician to cut.

And run, leaving behind an empty school with no teachers, no textbooks, no afterschool activities.

Except for vandalizing the empty shell.

Lisa

Lizzie

Richard

Serendipidy

Norval Joe

Tom

Planet Z

The next topic is Values

LISA

Broken Dreams

The sound of a siren wakes us. It’s close and feels as if it’s above us. We scrabble together, unsure what to do, should we signal to them? Start shouting perhaps?

It raises the same unspoken question- we’re not really prisoners, are we? The basement door’s unlocked so we’ve no great urge to escape. Why shout for help when we could probably just walk out anyway.

“I think it was an ambulance not a police car.”

“I can never tell the difference.”

I wonder if Number 1 is back and whether we are, at last, going to get some answers.

LIZZIE

Broken dreams and a scratch. A deep cut, now nothing but a scratch on the surface of the skin, a faint recollection of pain. A deepness forgotten.

Broken dreams and the urge to speak, to shout a future lost.

In complete silence, in complete immobility.

Broken dreams and a second, only a brief second, a signal from afar, a thump, a thump, a thump...

The drumming, louder and louder. A cacophony of doubts building up.

Broken dreams now and yesterday, and now. Broken.

Dreams of futures unspoken. And maybe, just maybe one day, just one day...

Maybe broken no more.

RICHARD

The Game of Life

Welcome to the Arcade of Broken Dreams!

Here are the games of despair and the wasted efforts, the hours of fruitless endeavour, and hopes betrayed.

What will you play today?

Will you play the claw machine? Clutching futilely at your goals, teasingly just out of reach, until - tantalisingly close - they fall from your grasp?

Or perhaps you'll choose the coin cascade? Feeding its hunger with all you have in the vain hope of winning big, but you never do.

Whichever game you play, you'll never win. Your life will never change.

But, I know you'll be back again tomorrow.

Guaranteed!

SERENDIPIDY

You'll find the urge to scratch irresistible.

But, trust me, scratching is the very last thing that you want to do.

By now, your skin is paper thin. It'll tear at the slightest touch, and you'll soon be ripping your own flesh from the bones. I promise you, once you start, you won't be able to stop.

So, I urge you, don't scratch.

Resist the temptation.

Grit your teeth and hold on, no matter what.

I know you'll give in, eventually, but please try not to scratch, just for a moment.

At least wait until I've turned the camera on.

NORVAL JOE

After the officer asked the same series of questions for the hundredth time, he said, "Okay. Let's start over from scratch."

Billbert had the urge to pound his head on the table. He interrupted the officer's line of questioning. "Officer Vattash, you said you were going to call my parents hours ago. Why aren't they here?"

Vattash shrugged indifferently. "Maybe they weren't home."

A female officer poked her head through the doorway. "Hey Vattash. The boy's parents are here. They're filing a missing person report."

"Officer Sheepdip!" Vattash growled. He made an annoyed face and tipped his head toward Billbert.

TOM

It was the 80s

If there ever an Arcade of Broken dreams it surely was Pizza Time Theater. The second restaurant in the chain was located in the back end of Town and Country in San Jose. I spend hours their glue to a space invaders. The place was a mad house of kids running around. Parents throwing back beer and wine that was on tap right next to the fountain dispenser. Only thing missing was the paper umbrella. When the whole thing folded, I was on the chapter 13 crew to sort out assets. Got that very space invader cabinet for a song.

852 Airship Archimedes

In 1928 the airship Archimedes made its maiden flight. The DELG created a fight from Buenos Aires to Caracas. Of note Captain Juan Domingo Perón was on that voyage. The Archimedes flow for nine years. On the night of May 5 1937 the airship disappeared over the upper Amazon Basin.

Lucy was an old Series Seven.

She did good work at the droid shop, and a vintage bot demonstrated to customers a bit of class, as opposed to the new Series Tens in the warehouse.

But she had a hard time holding a charge, and those Series Sevens had an integrated hardwired battery.

A swappable battery was a risky retrofit. Which Lucy declined.

She spent all of her time tethered to a power cord, never going more than five meters from the reception desk.

Smiling, welcoming people, waving people past, and arranging repairs for the broken Series Tens being returned.

There were ten of us Smith kids, and when the youngest Bobby went off to the Army, Mother had herself a bad case of Empty Nest.

At first, she'd bake cookies for all the neighborhood kids, but between me and my surviving brothers and sisters, Momma had a bad habit of dropping things in mixing bowls without looking first, and thank God Daddy said he'd do all the cooking.

So, she put out a bunch of birdfeeders and birdhouses, and the homestead was covered with birds.

And bird shit.

Even more reason not to take any of her cookies, kids.

Ah, Sweeps Month!

Three times a year, the Nielsen Company would do detailed measuring of audiences.

This would help them thumb the scales when setting rates with advertisers.

To boost their ratings, the networks would shelf their usual crap and roll huge attention-grabbing stunts.

Big stars on talk shows.

Major plot twists on the dramas and comedies.

Sweepstakes and viewer contests.

And the usual excuses to pixelate tits and ass on local newscasts.

Nowadays, most viewers use streaming or cable.

Everything is measured to the microsecond.

No more stunts. No more plot twists.

Just the endless river of mindless crap.

There are jesters everywhere.

Every office, every school.

And on every train and bus.

"Entertain us!" people shout at the jesters.

And they do.

Telling jokes, performing pratfalls.

Juggling things, and simple slight-of-hand close magic tricks.

They make everyone happy.

Much happier than when there were clowns everywhere.

People like the jesters more than the clowns.

Clowns sometimes get sad, and they cry.

Jesters do not get sad. They are always happy.

Constantly in motion, going from person to person, cheering them up.

Cheering all up who watch them.

When a jester grows tired, another appears, and we are all happy.

It's final exam season.

We bring our children to The Tower.

The doors open, they walk inside, and the doors close.

An hour later, the doors open again.

One by one, the children who passed the exam come out.

Some walk. Some run. Some crawl.

Some are carried out.

Maybe they'll wake up. Maybe they won't.

As for the kids who don't pass, they're taken to the top of the tower.

And they're pushed off the edge.

Some parents stand back and watch. And pray.

Others try to catch their children.

And others just stand underneath, and accept their fate.